Larry David has confirmed a 12th season of Control your enthusiasm Is in the making. No release date has been set for the next installment of the Introduce saga, but the Seinfeld The co-creator’s ad-libbed antics will eventually be back on HBO’s airwaves. It’s great that Introduce fans have a new season to look forward to, but the producers’ original plan to end with the most recent season would have been perfect. In an interview with the Hollywood reporterDavid’s co-writer and showrunner Jeff Schaffer revealed the original plans to wrap up the series with the Season 11 season finale.
Schaffer told THR, “Every season is the last season.” David and co. never go in a season of Introduce with the intention of making even more of it afterwards. Making the show is such a huge undertaking – matching storylines, improvising dialogue, cutting hours of filmed footage into chunky 30-minute episodes – that the Introduce team never plans more than one season at a time. Each season thus acts as a possible final season.
Some episodes of the show’s season finale would have made great series finales. Season 3 ended with Larry showing solidarity with a chef with Tourette syndrome by shouting a series of expletives. Jeff, Cheryl, Richard Lewis, and everyone else in the restaurant follow suit and quickly start one swearing tirade after another. The camera thrusting through a crowd of diners and shouting curse words at the proud look on Larry’s face would have been a perfect final shot for the series. Likewise, the season 4 finale would have sent Introduce out on a high note with Larry’s Broadway debut as Max Bialystock in The producers. The Season 5 finale is literally called “The End”. Larry dies, goes to heaven and meets his angelic guides before being sent back to Earth because it’s not his time.
In the Season 8 storyline, Larry moves to New York for a few months to avoid helping out at a charity event. The season ends with Larry moving all the way to Paris to get out of yet another charitable commitment. In Season 9, Larry is sentenced to death by the Ayatollah and desperately tries to have it revoked. It ends with Larry being chased by an Iranian man who has not heard that the fatwa has been overturned. In Season 10, Larry opens a “regret store” next to Mocha Joe’s coffeehouse to bankrupt him. It ends with the shop burning down to the ground and Mocha Joe buys a ‘spit house’ next door to Larry.
Any of these season finales could have been a series finale and Introduce fans would have been pleased. But the ending David and Schaffer had in mind for Season 11 would have been much more definitive. While filming the final episode, the crew got a recording of Larry’s dramatic death scene – in case they wanted to use it. Schaffer joked, “If this is how we go, this is how we go!” They got the chance, but decided to leave the season more open with a more ambiguous fate for Larry after David told Schaffer, “I’m not ready to die.”
Killing Larry may seem like a step too far for a sitcom, but this is no ordinary sitcom. Throughout the show, Larry invited a sex offender to Passover, stole flowers from a memorial site, and disguised as an incest survivor. In the Season 11 finale alone, Larry threatened Alexander Vindman, persuaded a monogamous Mormon to try polygamy, and stole a pair of shoes from a Holocaust Museum exhibit. His untimely passing would spell a surprisingly fitting end for the series.
It would have been particularly fitting at the end of Season 11’s storyline. Schaffer told THR that the season’s storyline “lent itself too perfectly” for an ending that leaves Larry in the dust. The season started with a man who drowned in Larry’s pool, à la Sunset Boulevard. After being threatened with legal action and even jail time for not having a five-foot fence around the pool, Larry was blackmailed by the victim’s brother into casting his hilariously untalented daughter in his new streaming series.
Over the season, Larry searched for a mayoral candidate, donated a boatload of money to political campaigns, and dated a ruthlessly obnoxious city councilor (brilliantly played by guest star Tracey Ullman) in a desperate bid to get the five-foot-long fencing law repealed. After all that effort to remove fences from pools, ending up with Larry drowning to death in a fenced-in pool would have been morbidly ironic, and a perfect ending to this wonderfully cynical sitcom.
That said, more Introduce can never hurt. If Larry had died in Season 11, Season 12 wouldn’t be on its way. So maybe the writers made the right decision by letting him live.
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